THIS MACHINE MOCKS FASCISTS

About the News or Lack Thereof

It’s been noted to me I’ve been fairly quiet about the news and politics here recently. This is true, primarily because I’ve been devoting most of my brain cycles recently to the new novel, which is challenging in unexpected ways and requires some interesting problem-solving on my part (note to Patrick, my editor: This is not a euphemism for “oh crap, what the hell am I doing.” Everything’s fine. Look! Over there! A puppy!).

As a result, while I am certainly aware of the news in the last several weeks, and have reflexive opinions about it, generally speaking I have not been thinking particularly deeply about it enough to craft something coherent enough to be readable for longer than a tweet or two. And, you know. That’s what Twitter is for.

Having said this, it’s now entirely possible I will go off on a tear about the major news events of the day, in detail, with footnotes, because hello, welcome to me. But I suspect not. I got my advance checks recently, and cashed them, even! And the new book has an October deadline. So, it has priority claim to my brain cycles. The rest of the real world will still get through from time to time, and I may even comment on it. But if I don’t, that’s my handy-dandy excuse.

Totally kidding. As much as I love your political commentary here I’d rather get the next book on time* (and well-written). And besides, I expect that on September 15th I’ll get plenty of your political insight when I receive my copy of Whatever.

It seems a few lemmings have reached out asking where all the commentary was. What with, Snowden, Manning, Obamacare, Egypt, Syria etc. what is a mindless person to think without some direction dammit!

It’s a well known fact that pressing the SEND, POST COMMENT, or CHECK IN buttons will automatically elevate your copy editing skills by a factor of two. There is little to be done, unless you actually have someone else proofread every comment.

It’s part of the same set of physical laws that mandate that any post which complains about someone’s grammar has an 80% chance of containing a grammar error.

I’ve found that if I post my first (or even second) reaction to something, I often end up with a bad case of foot-in-mouth disease. It’s even worse if I’m busy with something else (as I’ve been lately with prepping book #2 for publishing and minding my 6-month-old) and don’t think through what I’m trying to say. Given my tendency to be mouthy, cantankerous and opinionated, this can get awkward very, very quickly.

So now, aside from, as you note, a few quick sentences on Twitter, I’m trying to train myself not to say anything until I have the bandwidth and time to think of something actually useful to say.

John needs to add a ‘donate’ button so people can donate money to him. Every time he hits a certain number he comments on a world event. I am rather dissappointed that he has not commented about twinkies being back on store shelves.

Hum. so there are shitty things the world that may or may not raise your ire, but for all kinds of reasons you don’t have anything particularly insightful, amusing or generally worth reading to say about them hereabouts – so you don’t. That is not only a concept I can heartily endorse, but hope it’s going to become a trend. :)